The Instructions by Adam Levin
It was news to me that combover ever lacked prominence—it seemed so obviously to be the right word—but Flowers paid endless attention to words so I came to believe him, plus the motive he’d described for men sporting combovers seemed to be right for Monitor Botha, who was always trickling. Regardless of the motives behind Botha’s overcombing, though, you’d think he’d be one of the last guys in the world to make fun of some underweight troubled kid’s hair. At least that’s what I’d have thought.
But Egon Marsh—his dad awaiting trial on charges of child-porn that Egon, of course, was rumored to have starred in; his older brother a tweeker, freshly kicked out of Stevenson High School for possession; his sister Mia autistic, also probably retarded, the only kid in the Cage who never once got stepped (I learned all of this a few weeks later from Benji, maybe three or four days after his epic progression ended, by which time Egon and Mia had both been removed from Aptakisic, removed from the town in which they’d grown up, removed from the custody of their suicidal mother who then committed suicide; all of the rest of Aptakisic, however, had known about Egon’s family for a while)—Egon Marsh was one skinny, troubled kid, and Botha made fun of his hair three times. At least three times. The three times I saw were on my first day at Aptakisic—the Tuesday following Labor Day weekend—and for all I knew, Botha’d picked on Egon before then, too.
I didn’t even know he was doing it til the third time. The first time, he sniffed at the air and he said, “Something smells rape in here!” And that was true. Something did smell ripe, and it was Egon’s hair, which was matted and oily and flecked with white bits. He was sitting right next to me, and Botha, at the time he announced that something smelled ripe, was standing a few feet away from our carrels, and because I was new, and I didn’t know Botha, and because I couldn’t imagine a teacher could be such a dickhead to a kid so openly, I figured he was genuinely puzzled by the source of the smell, and I remember I was worried that he and everyone else might think the smell was coming from me. Short of saying that the smell was Egon’s—which I wasn’t willing to do—I wasn’t able to figure out a way to make it clear it wasn’t mine til after the moment had already passed.
Then a couple minutes later, Botha returned. He did this thing where he acted like a happy bloodhound, sniffing at the air along the trail from his desk to our carrels. This time he said, “Something smells downright bleddy Marshy.” This got laughs from some of the students, and I got more worried they’d think I was the stinker—I didn’t get the joke; I didn’t know Egon’s name; I figured that Marshy must have been lower-cased, and that it was either Australian or Aptakisical vernacular for foul or gross—and I still thought Botha sincerely didn’t know the source of the smell, and I knew that I sincerely didn’t want to start my career at Aptakisic as the kid who smells, so in order to make it clear that the stink wasn’t mine, that it would stay if I left and that it wouldn’t follow me, I broke off the tip of the pencil I was using and asked for permission to go to the sharpener, which was fixed to the opposite wall of the Cage. Botha told me that normally he’d give me a step for talking without raising my hand first, but since this was my first day, he’d let the whole thing slide, just this once, if I would raise my hand, wait to get called on, and then ask properly. That Botha might be actively trying to humiliate me didn’t seem any more likely to me than did the possibility that he was purposely being a dickhead to Egon—I assumed the rules were really important to him, and that he was worried I didn’t understand them—so I did as suggested. I raised my hand and got called on and I asked for permission.
Botha assented.
I went to the sharpener, and just as I’d started to turn the handcrank, he yelled out, “Wait! Wait, Mr. Makebee! No need to waste your affort. I think I’ve found a writing implement here—yes. Look. Right here in this nest!” And he made as if to pull a pen that he’d hidden inside of his sleeve from out of Egon’s hair. He waved the pen around.
A lot of kids laughed. The teachers tried not to. And Botha was laughing. He was looking at me, trying to get me to laugh, and I was looking at Egon, whose lips pursed and slacked as he tried to force a smile that just wouldn’t take. I didn’t know what to do.
Nakamook did. He stood at his carrel. “Combover,” he said.
The volume of the laughter instantly doubled.
And this was the beginning of the epic progression.
Botha stepped Benji once for not facing forward, and a second time for speaking without having been called on.
Benji said, “Combover.”
The laughter got louder, and continued getting louder each of the six times the word was repeated, and the volume, I’m sure, would have gotten higher yet, but before he could name the hairstyle a seventh time, Benji got an ISS and was sent to Brodsky.
When he came back from Brodsky the following period, he wrote the word COMBOVER on three sheets of paper and taped them to the walls of his carrel. We cracked up even harder than we had before, and Botha tore the three COMBOVERs down. Again Benji got an ISS; again he got sent to Brodsky.
When he returned from Brodsky’s that second time, he drew an anterior, a posterior, a sinistral, a dextral, and a bird’s-eye view of Botha’s head, and then he taped each to the walls of his carrel. After we fell from our chairs with laughter, and Botha tore all of the drawings down, Benji left the Cage with an OSS, and Brodsky sent him to Bonnie Wilkes, PsyD, to cool his heels for the rest of the day.
Wednesday, Benji served his second ISS.****
Wednesday also happened to be the last anyone at Aptakisic saw of the Marshes; that night, their suicidal mother was arrested for colluding with their father, the child pornographer, and Egon and Mia were taken into foster care nowhere nearby.
Thursday, Benji served OSS.
Thursday evening, Vincie Portite got hold of his dad’s electric clippers, and Friday morning Benji returned to the Cage with an actual combover, greased-down strands and everything. This time, there wasn’t just laughter. No one could take their eyes off Benji. Half the Cage got detentions for breaking the Face Forward rule, and Botha finally sent Nakamook to Brodsky, who called on Bonnie Wilkes again. They decided they couldn’t step kids for haircuts, no matter how ridiculous, but they did get hold of Nakamook’s mom, who left her job and picked him up.
On Monday he had a scrape on his chin, a yellow swelling along the orbit of his bloodshot right eye, and his head was shaved completely bald. I saw him in the hallway before first period.
“Newkid,” he said, “I forgot my Darker—left it in yesterday’s jeans.” It was the first time he’d ever spoken to me.
In the bathroom, I drew, with my 12-guage RoughWriter DarkerWider Permanent, a U-shaped sequence of Charlie-Brownish black W’s around Benji’s scalp, then four squiggled lines across the crown. When Botha sent Benji to the Office this time, Brodsky threw his arms up, called Benji’s mom, and sent him straight back to the Cage.
Tuesday morning Benji was limping. When I asked about it, he said the same thing he’d said about his damaged face the day before—that he kept wiping out on his skateboard—and then he told me his mom found all his Darkers and threw them away. He called me his “secret weapon” and “last best hope,” and I remained his combover artist—his combover re-toucher, really; Darker ink takes multiple showers to scrub clean.
By Lunch on Tuesday, the Cage students were no longer laughing at Benji’s progression so much as getting really uncomfortable about it. By Wednesday, even the discomfort had worn off. I asked Vincie Portite why Benji kept going, and I asked him if he agreed with me that Egon, wherever he was, would, by now, feel properly avenged, and want, if he were a real friend to Benji, for Benji to relent. Vincie said, “Tch. Benji’s not Egon’s friend. He stepped up for him, sure, but that was last week. What this is now has fuck-all to do with Egon Marsh. This is just Nakamook, Gurion.” Botha, for his part, continued to trickle, stepping Benji for every minor infraction he was able to spot. Nakamook’s stories about the strea
Re-touching the combover Thursday morning, seconds after having just watched him puke a color that was way too pink to blame on bad eggs, I understood that Benji, wrong or right, saw no way to end the progression any time soon without losing face. His commitment to defiance increased in proportion to the amount of punishment he suffered; he’d keep getting stepped by Monitor Botha and claiming to streak unluckily on a skateboard he didn’t possess until… what? Until some outside, benign force that had nothing to do with anyone else’s authority—particulary not Botha’s or Aptakisic’s—ended the progression is what. The end had to come organically, or at least it had to seem to.
And the only benign force I could think of that might fit the bill was the force of his own follicles: he would quit the progression only when his hair had grown in too thick for his scalp to show ink. I thought.
I was too scared to ask him if I was right, though. Not scared of him, but for him.
This was because of something that happened on the second morning that I drew on his head. I hadn’t thought twice about it at the time, but after telling me his mother took all his Darkers and I was his secret weapon, Benji’d said, “She didn’t get this, though,” and he’d pulled a black crayon from his jacket pocket. I should have just taken the black crayon and used it, because you can wash black crayon from your skin with a little soap and water, so if you don’t want your mom to know that you’ve been drawing on your head all you have to do is spend a couple minutes inside the boys bathroom before you go home. If what you drew on your head with was black crayon. When Nakamook had shown me the black crayon, though, I didn’t think about that. All I thought was how black crayon would show duller than Darker ink, and that after showers in Gym, a crayoned combover would need to be re-applied.
It’ll wash off, I’d told him, and plus it won’t look as good. I’d said, I’ve got my Darker right here anyway.
And then I’d brandished it.
He could not admit that he’d prefer the combover to wash off; not when the less-wash-offable version of it would serve the progression better; to do so would be to openly allow that his defiance was—at least to some degree—subject to the will of someone other than himself, and he wasn’t built to do that, not even when doing it would prevent him from being injured. And he was no liar, Benji—except when he lied to protect those he was loyal to—so he could not insist on using the crayon for untrue reasons, either. If I had known, on Tuesday morning, the way Benji was about snat and face, I would have understood that the crayon was a way out for him; I’d’ve kept my mouth shut about its washability and used it gladly. He would then have been spared at least a couple of the uglier imaginary falls off his phantom skateboard. But I hadn’t considered that til Wednesday evening, after he’d called me on the telephone—a unique phenomenon (Benji hated the telephone)—and, without solicitation, taught me the principles of snat and face. And by Thursday morning I knew that asking him if he’d end the progression when his hair grew back would only make it impossible for him to allow his hair to grow back. If I asked him, then any future ink-blocking hair-growth might seem intentional, a long-term plan. And because any plan—let alone a long-term one—was not organic, he would feel obligated to keep his head shaved. So I didn’t ask.
And I saw that it was almost beside the point anyway, because how long would it take for the hair to get thick enough? If after a week he was puking blood, I didn’t even want to picture what kind of injuries he’d suffer after two weeks, or three. And he was my best friend by that point, one of my only friends at Aptakisic, and certainly the only scholar-brained kid I knew who was allowed to talk to me anymore. So after re-touching the combover that Thursday morning, I saw I needed to protect him from himself. And then I figured out how.
What I did was, during Lunch—I was still allowed out of the Cage for Lunch back then, and Nakamook (owing to all the little infractions Botha kept nailing him for) wasn’t that day—I went over to the table in the cafeteria next to the one where all the Cage kids were sitting, and I got up behind Daryl Duncil, a biggish seventh-grader who I’d seen laugh at Main Man by the bus circle that morning, and chopped him sideways on the back of the neck so he leaned forward, then grabbed two fistfuls of his hair and plugged his face into the cafeteria table until he made glug-glug sounds and stopped resisting. And then, before Floyd dragged me to Brodsky’s, where I received my first ISS, I grabbed Vincie Portite by the collar and told him to get the word out that if anyone in the Cage brought a Darker to school before Tuesday or mentioned to anyone—anyone, I stressed—the threat I was about to finish making, they’d be praying I showed them the kind of mercy I just had Daryl Duncil.
Friday morning I left my Darker at home and said so to Benji. He asked Vincie for his, but Vincie said he’d left his at home, too. So did Leevon Ray, Jelly Rothstein, and every other kid from the Cage who passed the doorway of the C-Hall bathroom. I stood behind Benji the whole time, but a little bit beside him, too. That way, anyone he solicited who hadn’t gotten my message was able to see the suggestive gestures I kept making with my fist while shaking my head No.
Over the weekend, the ink on Benji’s skull faded to nothing. Monday morning I hid in the teachers lounge doorway until I saw him enter the Cage.
With that, the progression was over.
When I got to Call-Me-Sandy’s, Group was already seated in the circle of folding chairs. The arrangement was this: Call-Me-Sandy next to My Main Man Scott Mookus next to Vincie Portite next to Leevon Ray next to the Janitor next to Asparagus next to an open chair next to Jenny Mangey next to Jelly Rothstein next to an open chair next to an open chair next to Call-Me-Sandy.
I wanted to sit beside Main Man but couldn’t. I either had to sit between Mangey—who often cried during Group so you felt like you should hug her, but then when you did she thought you were her boyfriend—and Asparagus—who I’d just punched the wind from an hour before—or next to Jelly Rothstein, who bit and was a girl so I couldn’t hit her when she bit, or next to Call-Me-Sandy, who had a good, soft voice and looked like she probably smelled clean and sensible, like laundry detergent or talcum powder, but was also the most arranged one of all of them, which meant it was no good to sit where you had to turn your head to see her because then she could tell when you were looking.
Mookus saw me standing just inside the door. He lifted his legs off the ground and flexed his toes so they all popped at once. Then he sneezed three times and said, “Hello, Gurion. Had I known you’d be coming, I would have saved a chair for you. Do you know that?”
I know, Scott, I said.
“I’m glad you do,” Scott said. “Can I take this opportunity to tell you that I am bemused? Because I am bemused. I’m filled with wonderment. I wonder have you noticed the pretty glitter makeup pattern around the eyes of our wonderful Sandy this afternoon? I think she’s beautiful. And it is wonderful. Don’t you think she’s beautiful, Gurion? Don’t you think it is wonderful? Is or is not everything very splendid today? Does or does not the beauty of our Sandy make you feel like the everything bottle is filled up to the very edge of the brim of its neck with hope for a brand new tomorrow? I, myself, am almost choking on it. It’s at the top of my neck, too. In my throat. Inside my very throat. The joy and the beauty and the very wonderment. The very wonderment gives me a sense of the presence of a platform on which to build a better life for people like us. The common people. The people who deserve good health care and better wages. Chocolate milk. Don’t you feel like a sound investment in a good retirement plan? Don’t you feel as though you could love everything starting tomorrow, and everything could love you, if only you took an action to set into motion the coming of our new tomorrow and its tomorrow and that one’s tomorrow? Shotgun loaded hand on the pump and no matter who you damage you’re still a false prophet, but we drink chocolate milk and then we get muscles and smash down the droves with fists lik
I said, I wish I could sit next to you, too, Main Man.
“Do you see the glitter around Sandy’s eyes?” Scott said.
It’s pretty, I said.
“Thank you for saying so,” Scott said.
Call-Me-Sandy said, “Thank you, Gurion.”
I nodded = No problem, Call-Me.
She wanted me to take a seat, but she wouldn’t say so. She was good at not saying things. My mom taught me about it, that it is what you learn at schools for psychotherapy. You learn to use the invisible power in a quiet room to get other people to do what you want. But it all depends on the arrangement, so it is cheap. The power was not really Call-Me’s power because it is not a person’s power, even though it looks like a person’s power: I wanted to sit down because it was Group and in Group you sit down. Everyone who was in there was already sitting in the circle, so if I sat down, then it would not be because Call-Me-Sandy used invisible powers, even if that’s what it looked like. It would be because of the arrangement. The arrangement had the power. It was harder to stand in the Group Therapy arrangement than it was to sit down.